


Total Recall

by Ossobuco, weeghostie



Series: Lena'n'Max [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game), Saints Row
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Overwatch, F/F, Found Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-11-09 16:36:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11108526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ossobuco/pseuds/Ossobuco, https://archiveofourown.org/users/weeghostie/pseuds/weeghostie
Summary: (or, In Which All of Jack Morrison's Poor Decisions Come Home to Roost.)Not long before the dissolution of Overwatch, Blackwatch operatives Maddie McCarroll and Lilah Eshkibog are reported killed in action, leaving their daughters Lena McCarroll and Maxine Eshkibog behind.





	1. Ghosts part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Lena McCarroll is Ossobuco's Saints Row boss turned Overwatch OC; Max Eshkibog is weeghostie's.
> 
> Chapters may or may not be in chronological order.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mercenary company boss (and former Overwatch brat) Lena McCarroll is unexpectedly, and unintentionally, rescued from police custody.

_Well_ , thought Lena McCarroll, handcuffed in the back of the Stilwater PD armored van, _the Saints are not likely to bail me out of this one_.

It was her own stupid fault, what had happened—picking a fight with a couple of gang members operating well outside of where she usually let them, and not paying enough attention when the police sirens started up in the distance. She wondered, as the vehicle accelerated from the city grid onto the freeway out of town, if this was how Jack Morrison had felt when the Blackwatch scandals had started breaking, knowing that you had irretrievably fucked up and there was no way to dodge the consequences.

She wondered if this was how Gabriel Reyes had felt when her mom had died under his watch.

She and Max had been in the rec room when the call had come in—when a chilling silence had fallen over the whole compound, and Commander Morrison and Captain Amari had run to the command center faster than if death were on their heels. In the end, it was Ana who broke the news, probably since she’d been such a close friend of the now-deceased operatives Maddie McCarroll and Lilah Eshkibog.

It felt like how she imagined being shot in the stomach would feel, agony and emptiness all at once, and at the mercy of adults who knew the facts of what had happened and who wanted to help, but who couldn’t come close to understanding how much it hurt. They debated whether to try and find a relative for her to live with, or send her to a boarding school, and couldn’t understand what Maddie must have wanted for her, training her in marksmanship as soon as her hands were big enough to hold a gun, teaching her hand-to-hand combat and tactics and rules of engagement alongside the subjects in their homeschooling packets. She thought Commander Reyes would understand, he had always seemed to know them best, aside from their moms—but just like the rest, he was ready to send her packing, and in a few short weeks, both she and Max were boarding planes destined for opposite sides of North America—Lena to the Recruit Depot in San Diego, Max to a military academy in South Dakota.

Basic training came and went, then Marine Combat Training, then MOS school—all of which she excelled at in their physical and technical aspects, while earning the perpetual ire (and not infrequent disciplinary action) of almost every one of her superiors. At every milestone or ceremony, a part of her still hoped that someone from the old crew might appear out of the crowd, maybe even invite her back as an official recruit—and for months after her first deployment, she imagined all the faces that she’d grown up thinking of as _family_ and wondered how long they’d wait to come and find her again.

She and Max wrote to each other as often as they could, at least for a while; Max’s last letter came about eight months after they’d been sent away, ending with the postscript, “don’t go anywhere” (not that Lena had been planning to), and after that—nothing. Lena wrote a few more times, but her best friend had vanished, just like their mothers.

Then, only a few months later, the news broke that Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes had been killed and Overwatch HQ destroyed, and the organization was buried so deep in scandals (some that she couldn’t imagine were true, others that she’d known about first-hand) that the commanders would’ve wished they were dead anyway. Lena found herself losing interest in military life when it looked like it would be her whole career, rather than a kind of temporary holdover until she could go back to the life she’d actually wanted.

She was dishonorably discharged a few months after the Petras Act passed.

Briefly, she entertained ideas of trying to locate Max, or Jesse McCree, or any of the other agents she figured she could trust, but she had no money, no fuel, nowhere permanent to stay—she had to focus on finding steady work. As it turned out, there were plenty of mercenary companies who didn’t ask why you’d been discharged as long as you knew how to handle a gun, and if nothing else, the work was a welcome distraction from (and, at times, an effective outlet for) the bitterness and anger and aching loneliness of knowing she’d been left behind.

Between jobs and the occasional impromptu shootout, life with the Third Street Saints was surprisingly relaxed. They were closer to a street gang than to mercs in most respects, at least until she came around—it wasn’t difficult to work her way up the ranks, given her sharpshooting skills and tactical knowledge. Before long, the other lieutenants were looking to _her_ for instruction, and damned if it didn’t feel good to be respected.

As the Saints’ unofficial leader, nobody expressed objection to her picking up outside work on occasion, as long as she kept a lower profile. Her kill count increased, as did her asking price, and between this and the Saints’ suddenly becoming a major player in the east coast’s mercenary economy, just as many people wanted her jailed or dead as wanted to hire her. Avoiding the police wasn’t difficult, and most of the enemies she made could be neutralized one way or another as long as she was careful. But now and then, there were signs that someone (or something) else had entered the picture—a team of two or three tailing her so well that she almost didn’t notice them until she was mere blocks from the Saints’ penthouse, or an ambush on a paid job that was definitely neither rival mercs nor legitimate soldiers, and who used tactics that were nothing like police or military and everything like what her mama and Max’s mama and Gabriel Reyes used to discuss before missions when they thought she was sleeping soundly in her bed.

The fact was that Lena _should_ have had the foresight necessary to avoid scenarios like this one, and yet, here she was being driven to lockup, with two disheveled Los Muertos lieutenants strapped in (and quite understandably panicked) beside her.

The cuffs on her wrists and ankles were too strong to break with brute force, not that it was prudent to try while in militarized police custody. They’d managed to find and confiscate all of her weapons, too, so she couldn’t even try to jimmy the latches with a knife. Resigning herself to captivity was about as far from her nature as possible, but there was no immediate way out. The cops were all up front in the cab, well out of reach, and besides, she didn’t really want to kill them if she didn’t have to. It’d just make her life more difficult.

So, she sat in relative quiet in the back of the van, chains jingling as the vehicle rattled along the empty highway towards one of the few facilities in the state that had been deemed secure enough to hold her.

They were about an hour out of the city, rumbling through rolling hills of pockmarked red dirt, when the van skidded and shuddered to a sudden halt, the metal frame groaning, everyone inside jerking forward.

Lena couldn’t see anything from her narrow view out the windshield, but the cops all drew their weapons, their eyes trained on one target in front of the truck—a moment later, visible panic crossed their faces.

“Oh, shit, it’s _him_ —”

The driver’s side door was ripped open, and then there was an ear-splitting hail of bullets in the cab. Lena turned as flat against the wall as she could, ducking her head, but the spray was targeted—it didn’t seem like the attacker had interest in anyone other than the cops, at least not yet. Through the ringing in her ears, she could hear return fire, then vaguely detect the sounds of punches and kicks against body armor, occasionally a grunt or cry when a blow landed on flesh. She chanced a look.

The driver and one of the guards were lying still and bloody on the floor of the cab. Likely they’d both been caught in the initial spray, guns drawn but with no time to use them.  A pump shotgun lay next to the pedals, far out of her reach, but a pistol had fallen and bounced a little closer, and maybe, if she stretched just right—

The two Los Muertos boys jumped and cursed when she fired at the chain linking her ankles to the floor, but she couldn’t have cared less about them anymore—two shots were enough to split the chain, and then she was out of the van and into the glaring white sunlight, pistol clutched in her still-cuffed hands. Half-blind, she staggered two steps towards the far side of the road.

Something— _someone_ —hit her from the side like a speeding truck. The force knocked her clean off of her feet and just about sent her flying, but she tucked her head and converted the momentum into a roll. She’d dropped her gun, but her assailant had also lost his at some point, and she sprinted to him before he could pick it up—she spun a roundhouse kick into the side of his ribcage that should have knocked him flat, but it hardly even staggered him. Another kick, which he deflected like it was a child’s flailing, and he went immediately for a cross—she weaved, but she must not have been fast enough because the next thing she knew, she was flat on the ground, and the man was going again for his rifle—

She locked her legs around his ankle just in time and _twisted_. He fell heavy and hard, and now she was on her feet, and she jammed an elbow at the side of his head as he scrambled to stand. He turned it to one side, so she spun and struck with the other, and as he threw both hands up to block it with his palms, he growled, “ _Lena_?”

The sound of her name in that curt, gravelly voice clicked. It was Morrison. Commander Jack _fucking_ Morrison.

“You _dead_ _motherfucker_ ,” she spat, and went in for another hit.

“Easy, McCarroll,” he grunted as he jerked away, throwing his forearms up in pure defense, “it’s me—”

“I know it’s you, you goddamn son of a bitch.” She feinted, then elbowed him square in the left lower jaw so hard that, this time, he staggered back. She had half a mind to kick his legs out from under him for good measure, but held back the urge, more or less content with the sight of him reeling a little and testing his jaw to make sure it wasn’t broken.

Lena could recall only scattered gray in the former Overwatch commander’s blond hair, but now it was all silvery-white and growing thin on the top of his head. Beneath the visor that covered his eyes and much of his face, his skin was wrinkled and scarred, the once-sharp lines of his face beginning to sag. He looked twenty years older than the man she remembered, which would have been surprising enough on its own, except…

“Everyone thinks you’re dead,” she snapped.

Jack bent to pick up his assault rifle and grunted quietly as he straightened back up. “Good.”

That left her almost as gobsmacked as his right cross. “Good?” she repeated a second later, and maybe just finding out that he’d cheated death and been hiding all this time was forgivable, but that he was so fucking _blasé_ about it? “The actual _fuck_ , Morrison? You and Reyes ship me off to fucking boot camp and you just _leave_ me there while you go and blow each other up, and all you’ve got for me is ‘ _good_ ’?”

“You were too young to understand,” he growled, “disappearing was the only way I could keep doing what had to be done—”

“What, like killing cops and stealing Helix tech? You’ve been all over the goddamn news, and I swear to god, if I’d known that was you—”

“You’d have turned me in? Told them how to get to me?”

“I’d have hunted you down my-fucking-self,” she snapped, and now that she’d raised her voice, she couldn’t bring it back down—it felt good to yell at him after so many years. “Hell, I should bring you in right now! Abandoning Max at that piece of shit school? Do you even fucking care that she disappeared—”

“You still don’t understand,” he dismissed, turning his back, and as if that weren’t enough to make Lena see red, “there are more important things—”

She was not going to let him just walk away from her. He was making a beeline for a beat-up motorcycle that lay on the ground in front of the van. She ran beside him; if her hands hadn’t still been bound, she would have grabbed him, but all she could do was keep shouting.

“Did you even _know_ that she’s gone? Who else was supposed to look out for her, our moms? _Oh, wait_.” He didn’t stop, so she jostled his side as she kept pace. “What’s so fucking important that you couldn’t even keep an eye on us? Are you gonna tell me that Reyes faked his death, too?”

That one actually made Jack flinch, and she relished just a little in seeing him turn his head away. Behind him, the narrow road rippled in the heat, the dry sagebrush shivered on the rolling red hills.

Jack sighed. “Go get your gun, McCarroll.”

“Are we gonna shoot this out?” The pistol glittered like a diamond in the sun where it had fallen out of her hands. “Do you want a five second head start?”

Jack said nothing, for which she was a little grateful. Likely, if he’d responded, she’d be right back to yelling at him.

She crouched by one of the cop’s bodies and fished in his pockets for a handcuff key—not easy _while_ cuffed, but it wasn’t the first time, and she suddenly had to wonder, did Jack have any idea what she’d been up to all this time (apart from finding her in police custody, which was a completely inaccurate representation of the last few years, thank you very much)? She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could feel him watching from behind the visor like the sun beating down on them. It was like being watched by a machine, and made her even less inclined to turn her back.

Once the cuffs were off, she chucked the key ring into the van—the two other prisoners could sort themselves out. She grabbed the pistol, checked the magazine (about half full, but better than being totally unarmed), and looked back expectantly.

“C’mere,” he grunted as he lifted the bike and straddled it. He sounded about as thrilled about the idea as Lena felt as he added, “get on.”

“What the fuck for?”

“Not gonna tell you twice, McCarroll.”

The way he barked her surname was a little like her old drill instructor, but with the memory overlaid of what Jack used to call her mother. Not with the same grouchiness or impatience, of course, he wouldn’t have dared—but it was just close enough to make Lena want to bite her cheek. She slung one leg over the motorcycle and grabbed onto Jack’s waist.

“Dropping me off at the nearest police station?” she jabbed.

“We’re going to the new Overwatch HQ.” He lifted the kickstand and started the engine. “Winston initiated a recall.”


	2. Ghosts part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena McCarroll is trying and failing to get comfortable in New Overwatch (TM), and gets her second visit from a ghost.

The sun is just rising, orange light filling the cracks in the windows of the new Overwatch’s HQ, or more accurately, its hide-out. Likely abandoned since shortly after the Omnic crisis, it’s only marginally worse than the Saints’ base of operations, low-profile and generally low-tech except for the few amenities that Winston has managed to repair or install himself. The old dormitory’s doors don’t lock, and the beds are worse than the granite slab of a mattress she’d had in boot camp. There’s a kitchenette with an unreliable oven and no dishwasher, and the only furniture in the adjacent rec room is Winston’s tire swing and a musty couch with a persistent odor of stale coffee.

 _And thank fuck for coffee_ , Lena McCarroll thinks as she reclines on said couch with her mug of (fresh) brew. She’s the only one awake, partially due to a Marines-born habit of rising early, partially because she hasn’t been able to sleep for more than a couple hours at a time since Jack brought her here. It’s given her a chance to learn the others’ schedules, though. Winston keeps hours that are just as irregular, but offset just enough that they don’t have to fight for the coffee machine. Jesse McCree stays up late, sleeps late, and wakes up hungover about half the time. Tracer sleeps a solid eight hours every night and is invariably the brightest-eyed of the whole gang.

Jack Morrison wakes up even earlier than Lena does, but he leaves base for days at a time to go steal more weapons, or summarily execute people, or whatever else he does when he isn’t busy calling _her_ a criminal. Lena does not miss his company.

It isn’t like the old Overwatch at all, really. She isn’t sure what she expected, but it was definitely something more official—more equipped, more purposeful. They seem to have jobs to do, based on what she’s overheard between the others, but nobody has bothered to elaborate. She suspects that Jack has ordered them not to until he’s decided he can trust her.

Maybe subconsciously, she expected something more _populated_. Even now, even though the building is nothing like the base she grew up on, she expects to find Max sitting up on the kitchen counter reading an instruction manual, or spy Genji and Fareeha practicing with throwing knives in the yard, or turn a corner and run into Gabriel Reyes walking back from the shooting range smelling like propellant, or—or…

She takes a swig of scalding-hot coffee and grits her teeth.

It really isn’t what her return to Overwatch was supposed to be like at all. (But until Jack lets her go on field trips with the rest of the class, she supposes it doesn’t count, anyway.)

Halfway through her second cup, she’s bored enough to consider waking up Jesse and bullying him into a wrestling match, when there’s the sound of a motorcycle pulling up outside. At first she writes it off as Jack coming home early, but no—the engine sound is different, a little louder but fewer cylinders. The sound of it coming to rest on the gravel is lighter, and Lena can’t even hear any footsteps—so, _definitely_ not Jack.

She figures she’s only got a few moments before the doors are blown or battered in, so she grabs her pistol from the coffee table and tucks down, one knee on the floor, the other foot braced on the couch cushions, ready to spring but still hidden from view.

The door opens with a gentle click of the electronic latch, and it swings open quietly. Now, Lena can hear footsteps, but just barely. One person, gait unbalanced.

The door closes.

“Who’s there?” a woman says, guarded, and although it’s deeper and huskier than it used to be, Lena would know the voice and its accent anywhere. The mug slips from her fingers, rolling and clattering to the ground, and now the couch is going to smell even _more_ like stale coffee—

—and Captain Ana Amari strafes slowly around the couch, sidearm aimed with both hands. A sniper rifle is slung over her back, along with a fraying rucksack.

Lena slowly drops her pistol. She must look like an absolute moron, in her tactical crouch on the cushions like when she and Max and Fareeha were kids, building blanket forts and playing soldier. The dumbstruck stream of “okay, holy shit, but what the _fuck_ ” coming out of her mouth probably isn’t helping, but this isn’t like what happened to Jack, she was half the globe away when Jack was supposedly killed, but Jack himself broke the news when Ana had died, how she’d been killed covering his escape…

(And now an awful voice in her head starts whispering, _if Jack was wrong about Ana, then maybe—_ **maybe** —)

Ana has already holstered her gun, as if she doesn’t need the answer to her question. “Lena, is that you?”

“What the fuck,” Lena repeats, slowly standing as if the floor might give way underneath her. “Captain Amari…”

“Please, dear, just call me Ana.” The sniper shrugs the rucksack off of her shoulders and onto the couch (the rifle stays on her back, rather conspicuously as far as Lena is concerned), and takes a long look into Lena’s face. Lena doesn’t get the sense that Ana doesn’t trust her—on the contrary, her eyes are warm and soulful and horribly sad. “Did Winston’s recall reach you? How did you get here?”

“Morrison and I, uh… ran into each other.” She grimaces.

The very corner of Ana’s lips quirks. “Is that so.”

“Yeah, speaking of Morrison…”

“… he and I are both dead,” she finishes. “Or so we let the world believe. Including each other, until very recently.”

“If you were both alive all this time,” Lena asks, and where the same thoughts directed at Jack just make her want to deck him, with Ana it’s different—it hurts like a stab wound, and her voice cracks involuntarily. “Why didn’t anyone come for me? Or for Max?”

Ana’s lips press thin. “Is Maxine not with you?”

Lena doesn’t answer for a long moment, like maybe Ana knows and isn’t telling, because the alternative hurts even worse. “No. I don’t know where she is, she fucking vanished. So why did you—or Jack, or Gabriel, any of you—why did you let this _happen_?”

“Talon was watching all of us.” Ana’s voice is equal parts calm and stern, and if Lena’s reading her right, too much of both. “Even when they believed that Ana Amari and Jack Morrison were dead, they hunted us. If we had gone to you, either of you, we would have led them right to you.”

“That,” Lena snapped, “is a bullshit excuse if I’ve ever heard one.”

Ana’s overall demeanor doesn’t change, but she hesitates, and there’s a quiet rasp in her throat. “It was true at first,” she sighs, “or it was what we each told ourselves, that you both were safer without us. And then we became so busy, trying to stop Talon or to get revenge…”

“… that you forgot.” Lena waits a moment for Ana to protest, but the older woman only looks away, silent. “You fucking forgot about us. No, yeah, it’s okay, I think I figured that out already.”

Sure, she never wanted to believe it, but even if she had, it’s another thing entirely to have it confirmed by someone she thought she could trust. It makes her eyes burn and her fists clench, and the weight of it breaks whatever stupid sense of familial loyalty has kept her here this long. It’s not too late to go back to the Saints and their vastly superior cash flow—hell, maybe she’ll take Jack’s motorcycle with her, and sell it for parts just to spite him.

“I can’t believe I let Morrison drag me back to this shithole. Don’t know what I fucking expected.” She picks her gun back up and tucks it into her jeans, safety on—and that’s it. She doesn’t need to take anything else that isn’t already on her person. Maybe she should let the others know she’s leaving, but if they couldn’t even be bothered to look for her? Fuck ‘em. They can figure it out on their own.

 “You expected better of us, and you were right to.”

—and she stops before she’s halfway to the door. She doesn’t turn back, not yet, but still. _Damn it_.

“Someone should have been there for you as you grew up, and we took that from you—just as I took it from my own daughter. If you cannot forgive me, I understand. But for the others… I can’t believe it was pure coincidence that Jack found you, Lena. I can only suppose that not everyone forgot about you.”

At first, Lena scoffs, because there’s no way in a thousand years that Jack had any idea she was inside that police van, but… now that she thinks about it, what with everyone else’s reactions to her arrival, it’s funny that Jesse McCree hadn’t seemed the least bit surprised to see her.

Not that it truly makes up for, well, _everything_ , not that she isn’t still furious, but… all right, if it’s true, she can’t just leave without saying goodbye. If Jesse thought it was worth bringing her here, however the fuck he’d managed to orchestrate it, then maybe it was worth giving the new Overwatch a chance.

“Will you share a pot of tea with me, and tell me what I’ve missed?”

Lena takes a deep breath and turns around.


	3. Ghosts - part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then there's Max...

“Hey Jack,” McCree had said, cowboy drawl firmly in place. “You should check out the illegal races up by the Canadian border. Think y’might find ‘em interesting.” It was rapidly occurring to Jack that he’d been underestimating that man for at least fifteen years, and the thought was galling. Although who could really blame him - as a kid Jesse’d been an insubordinate little shit, and the grown-up cowboy didn’t do much to inspire any more confidence.

That said, he’d gone. And now here he was, standing in the shadows around a makeshift, open-air garage, watching a bunch of criminal lowlifes go about the business of readying their trucks for a mud-race as he tried to figure out what the hell McCree’d been hinting at. The scene was lit half by neon and half by bare-bulbed mechanic’s lamps, hung wherever space could be found, and a jumble of conversation thrummed under the spark-spray of welding machines and the clang of percussive maintenance.

About a quarter of the crowd were Los Muertos, marked by their distinctive skull-and-bone paint - it looked like they were fielding three trucks. A further quarter were from across the _other_ border, bandanas and jackets in red-black checked plaid marking members of The Roughnecks out from the crowd. The rest looked to be independent - fielded by smaller gangs, maybe, or drivers looking to make names for themselves without the backing of an organization.

The Los Muertos and The Roughnecks would be the ones to watch - both were known to smuggle guns and tech across borders, it would be no surprise to find they were using their trucks for that as well as racing. But he found his eye caught by one of the independent mechanics - she was working on a Roughneck truck, but wasn’t wearing a trace of plaid, marking her out as a contractor. The woman was big - head and shoulders above most of the crowd, arms thick with muscle and covered in tattoos, with a head topped by a riotous mohawk in neon tones of purple and teal. Something about the shape of her face, glimpsed briefly when she came up for air or tools, was indefinably familiar.

He didn’t figure it out until a shorter Los Muertos, virulent green hair and pink bone paint, came over to talk to her where she was buried shoulders deep in the engine. He said something - Jack couldn’t hear what, too much background noise even for his enhanced senses - and the woman nodded, leaning down to shake his hand before she turned back to her task. A few minutes later she extricated herself from the engine, closed the hood, and gave a nod to the Roughneck who’d been acting as her tool monkey - but when she grabbed her tool box and moved to walk away, another Roughneck (big, in a full plaid shirt - probably the leader of this group) snagged her arm.

A hush - a physical hush, one Jack could feel in his gut - fell over the garage, and from his position Jack could see her jaw harden, dark eyes going flinty and almost black in the low light. That was what gave him the clue he needed.

She looked just like her mother when she did that. Albeit at least five inches taller and with another fifty pounds of muscle. Which was saying a lot, because Lilah Eshkibog had not been a small woman.

Despite her facial expression, Maxine’s deep voice was mild, even pleasant, as she turned to the man grasping her upper arm. “Didn’t know you were lookin’ to drive this race with a broken arm, Alain. You should’ve said something.”

He dropped his grip with a speed that spoke of fear, despite the way he tried to play it off as exaggerated courtesy. “You can’t go help the fuckin’ Muertos, you’re workin’ for _us_.”

“No, I’m _finished_ working for you. I’m done with your engine - if you want my time outside of that you’ll have to pay for it, just like everyone else.”

The man’s - Alain’s - voice dripped with disdain. “And how much would this exclusivity cost me.”

“Double again what you paid me for the engine. And up front, if you’re that scared of healthy competition.”

His face went red as he stepped forward, although his attempt to intimidate was clearly doomed to failure. “Tu te fous de ma gueule!?”

“Hey,” Maxine shrugged, not concerned in the slightest, “You wanna pay me to sit on my frankly fantastic ass, that’s what it’ll cost. No skin offa my nose either way.”

The Roughneck made a noise, half rage and half disgust. “One of these days, Eshkibog, someone’s gonna put you in your place.”

“You’re welcome to try any time you want, bud. I could use the exercise.”

* * *

Midway through the race - which Maxine wasn’t watching, and therefore Jack wasn’t watching either - the whole night went to shit. Sirens began to sound out on the prairie, startling the mechanics who were crowded around to watch Maxine arm-wrestle one of the omnics, betting flying hot and heavy.

“Fuck,” she said, dropping her opponent’s hand. “That’s our cue to blaze - I’ll get you later, Ariz.” The omnic nodded, each of them grabbing roughly half the stack of cash that had occupied the space between their elbows before they both went their separate ways.

Jack grabbed her arm as she passed his position in an alley between two sheds, tugging her into the shadow - although the force required told him that, even with his enhanced strength, it was only the element of surprise that had let him pull her anywhere.

She stopped her hand mid-swing (a fact Jack was deeply grateful for), eyebrows knitting as she recognized him. “Commander _Morrison_? The fuck, I thought you were _dead_.”

He’d just opened his mouth to respond when her eyes widened in alarm, and he caught the sound of running feet and paramilitary body armour in a hurry outside their alley before she grabbed his arm and pulled him deeper into the shadows.

“Fuck it, c’mon,” she said, “Explanations later, it’s been like five years since I saw the inside of a jail cell, and I’m hoping to keep up the streak.”

Max didn’t say a word, shoulders tense, as she hauled him bodily through a maze of shipping containers and corrugated metal fences, avoiding the RCMP raiders more adeptly than he’d ever have expected of her. Eventually they came to the cinder-block perimeter fence, a seven-foot obstacle topped with rusted curls of barbed wire - except here, apparently, where there was a three-foot gap, the blocks of the wall scuffed in a way that made it obvious people went in and out this way all the time.

It didn’t slow Maxine down in the slightest, her huge frame clambering over without any apparent difficulty, although she did pause at the top to grin down at him, a sardonic expression that made his heart clench a little, familiar from countless Blackwatch debriefings - in fact, he was pretty sure it was the same grin her mother had given him at that first Overwatch press conference, all those years ago - although Maxine’s eyes were far warier than Lilah’s had ever been.

“Need a hand, old man?”

He didn’t deign to reply, accepting the dangled hand wordlessly and allowing her to drag him up to the top. She had, apparently, inherited her mother’s muscle. He could only hope for the sake of Canadian law enforcement that the fascination with explosives hadn’t been hereditable.

They travelled in silence until they fetched up at an abandoned farm, an open-air quonset that once would have sheltered tractors and combines now home to a motley bunch of vehicles that spanned the gamut from battered trucks to lovingly modded hot rods. The sirens were still clearly audible in the still night air, underlain by a chorus of crickets that had only briefly paused when they’d entered the shelter, but the flashing lights were only barely visible on the horizon.

Max turned to face him, arms crossed across her chest and expression a strange combination of uncertainty and what looked to be dawning anger, and they stood in silence for a few seconds.

“Maxine-“ He wasn’t sure what he was going to say - but it turned out not to matter, as the instant her name left his lips, she stutter-stepped towards him and drove a fist into his gut. There’d been a split-second where he could at least have turned with it, a slight tell that would probably have been imperceptible to anyone else, but he didn’t bother - she’d missed the solar plexus, deliberately he suspected, and it wasn’t a debilitating blow. Regardless, he wheezed for a moment before straightening to say, “Feel better?”

She shrugged, tattoos rippling in the moonlight like oil over water as she leaned her hip against the front bumper of a battered jeep. “A bit. I got like seven years of shit I’d like to give you, but for now I’m more interested in hearing what the fuck you’re doing _here_. Also what the fuck you’re doing _alive_.”

Jack struggled briefly with himself (she was a criminal, that much was clear, no soldier, not even as much as McCarroll, did he really want-) and then went with the lie. “I was looking for you. Winston initiated a recall.”

Something flashed in her eyes, something he couldn’t identify, but the snort that burst from Maxine was laden with bitterness. “Yeah right. Pull the other one, Morrison. Even before you ‘died’,” the air quotes blistered with sarcasm, “you didn’t look for me, so why the fuck would you start now.”

“‘Didn’t look for you’? You were at the Academy, why the hell would we have _needed_ to look for you? And for that matter - illegal racing, Maxine? Gangs?“ His tone turned chiding, “What would your mother have thought?”

As soon as it came out of his mouth, he knew it was a stupid thing to say. Judging by her humourless smirk, so did Maxine. “My mom would fucking shake my hand, and you know it. As for the Academy - I ran away right after you fucking _emailed_ me about Captain Amari. But thanks for verifying what I always figured - that no one at Overwatch even noticed when their teenaged ward dropped off the face of the goddamn planet.”

“We were a little bus-“

She interrupted him before he could even finish the thought, apparently impatient with the conversation. “Fuck you, Morrison. I was seventeen, my mom was dead, and you sent me to juvie across the continent from the only family I had left - you couldn’t even spare a couple minutes to notice that I’d fucking _disappeared?_ ” She looked at him in disbelief for a moment - when he stayed quiet, she continued with a scowl. “You know what, fuck you, and fuck this, I don’t need this shit.”

Jack could only watch wordlessly as she climbed into the jeep’s driver’s seat, engine starting with a muted, well-tuned roar.

She made it as far as the quonset’s entrance before he heard, audible even over the sound of the engine, Maxine growl something under breath, and the hollow thunk of something hitting the steering wheel. In the next instant, she stuck her head out the window, scowl still firmly affixed to her face. “You want a ride in to town, Morrison?”

* * *

Max hadn’t come back.

It seemed he might have underestimated how pissed off she was with Overwatch as a whole and Commander Jack Morrison in particular. Kind of a dumb mistake given how well her mom and Jack had always gotten along (i.e. not well at all).

And Jack, of course, as far as he could tell, hadn’t even goddamn _tried_ to convince her. “Not a good fit,” Jack had said, “and the kind of stuff she’s involved in…it's better this way.” Probably hadn’t even registered that he - that any of them that answered the recall, really - was a criminal too. Wasn’t like he’d _bought_ that damn pulse rifle from Helix.

Probably hadn’t even thought about the fact that with Talon experiencing a resurgence, Max would be a target - for “recruitment” (too kind a word for some of their methods) or for elimination. And Max didn’t _have_ any backup - hell, she’d spent the last seven years steadfastly refusing to join a gang, and making her point pretty damn emphatically when she had to. She had a lot of acquaintances but few friends, no family - because half a decade ago her “family” had shuffled her off to military academy and for all intents and purposes forgotten about her.

Thankfully, there was at least one person here he could guarantee would be at least as worried about Max as he was.

Jesse paused in the door frame to look at the woman lounging on the threadbare couch with all the grace and restrained violence of an underfed tiger. Lena was sullenly cleaning her rifle, parts carefully laid out and cleaning cloth in hand, but looked up when he cleared his throat. “So a little birdie brung me some news just now. ‘Bout a friend of ours - used to be a skinny little thing, not a big talker but a left hook like an angry bear.”

Lena’s eyes widened, expression clearing, before she reined the reaction in. “You found Max?”

“I found Max. You interested in a bit of a road trip?”

“Jesse,” she grinned, sharp white teeth flashing as she shot her rifle’s bolt home and started packing away her tools, “you couldn’t stop me if you tried.”

She was probably right. He’d never managed to beat Maddie McCarroll in her prime (his prime too, arguably), and her daughter had grown up as hard and mean as her momma ever was.


	4. Ghosts - part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max's way of resolving stress could use some work, and Jesse and Lena go on a road trip.

Max is pissed after Jack leaves, goes to bed mad, wakes up mad, and fumes her way through a full night of work at Marco’s garage.

It’s not even entirely at Jack, and his fucking holier-than-thou attitude that he apparently hasn’t managed to shake despite having fucked up so badly that Overwatch was actually illegal now. No, it’s at least half at herself, at the fact that she apparently hasn’t managed to stomp out that one tiny part of her heart that had never quite given up hope that Overwatch - that her _family_ , or as much of one as she’d ever really had, beyond her mom and the McCarrolls - had looked for her, had _cared_. The tiny part of her heart that had leapt when Jack had said (lied) he’d been at the races looking for _her_ \- until reality had re-asserted itself.

It’s galling to think that seven years later she’s still that fucking stupid.

By the fourth day she’s tired of it - tired of the tension in her neck and jaw, tired of snapping at people that don’t really deserve it. Tired of the way she keeps remembering that little pop of joy, of hope, before realizing Jack was lying through his perfect Boy Scout teeth.

So she does what she always does when she can’t get her head straight.

She signs up for the fights.

Max had fought a lot more when she was younger - she’d been angrier, then, and the underground fights were a good place to let that out in a way that wasn’t going to result in a third trip to jail. They’d also been a reliable source of income before she’d become known just as well for her skill with a wrench as she was for her skill at breaking bones.

It wasn’t like she’d quit cold-turkey once she’d made it as a mechanic, of course - it was just that wrenches were hard to hold with a broken hand, and that was suddenly a concern now. She’d knocked it down to once or twice a month, tried to keep it to the lower levels no matter how much the organizers would jump for joy if she put her name in for a championship fight. She didn’t always succeed - but it wasn’t like knocking down the number of fights she was in had degraded her skills any. In fact, it might actually have made her better, since she wasn’t fighting injured all the time.

All of which means, when she goes to Arthur-T and says “Gimme something good” he doesn’t have any trouble slotting her into the schedule.

One of the big factors in her success as a fighter has always been that she doesn’t mind fighting omnics - not a common thing amongst human fighters. Sure, she has to wrap her hands carefully, be a little more diligent about blocking and dodging, but hell - it isn’t like you can’t knock them offline just like you can a human. And leverage can do some amazing things when your opponent is that dense.

(Her favourite thing about fighting omnics is, not only are they unlikely to die if she hits them too hard in the face or holds that choke a little too long, but they often come to her for fixing up afterwards. There’s something even more satisfying about repairing your own damage than there is in doing the damage in the first place. Not that she dares let that get around. It wouldn’t do much for her rep.)

Which is how, about five days after the spectre of Overwatch had shown up to solidify that she wasn’t, and never had been, good enough, she steps into the ring with one of the biggest omnics she’s ever seen.

They aren’t quite as tall as her - not many people are, to be honest - but they’re well above average height for a new gen omnic, and probably (barring a change in alloy) at least 50lbs heavier. They introduce themself as Zeer when Max shakes their hand, and Max will bet her good socket set that they’d come out of the South African omnium at some point in the last decade (not that she did anything so gauche as looking for their maker’s mark, it was just that the omnics out of that factory tended to have a different curve to the shielding hiding the superficial nerve connections to the arm). Not essential information, but interesting - she’d thought the South African omnium was still quarantined, but maybe Zeer had escaped before they’d raised the walls.

It’s a good fight - one of the best Max has had in months, if not years. Zeer swings almost as soon as the ref steps out from between them, and Max dodges a hit that would almost certainly have put her on the ground with centimetres to spare. In return Max throws a spin-kick at the relays hidden under their side-plating, hitting hard enough to feel the impact all the way up to her hip - she doesn’t manage to knock the relays offline, but their left hand droops a bit, enough to know they’d felt it. The fight has begun.

Both combatants are wary now. They circle and exchange probing blows for what feels like hours but is probably minutes - she can tell the omnic is hoping to take the match to the ground, Max being far more vulnerable to a choke than they are. She manages to keep her feet, taking a handful of hits, the worst of which snaps her jaw shut and her head back, making her spit blood from a bitten cheek. Zeer is in at least as bad shape, one leg dragging from where Max has managed to knock the central nerve bundle out of alignment with an axe-kick, faceplate visibly dented - she can’t tell for sure, but thinks their vision might be obscured, a theory proven when her next punch drives hard into their shoulder plating without even an attempt at a block, hitting the point at which the arm motivators rise closest to the surface.

She almost misses the omnic’s retaliatory kick, coming in at an angle that can’t be replicated by human joints.

The thing about omnic fights is that they’re almost like endurance races - you either have to damage them enough that they stop being able to pass the five-count test, or you have to convince them to tap out, which is a lot harder with an opponent that doesn’t need to breathe. It’s considered something akin to cheating to turn down or off your feedback sensors for a fight, but Max is pretty sure most omnic fighters don’t let that stop them - which makes joint locks almost useless.

Except, and this is the thing you have to know about fighting omnics, except the neck and spine. Those conductive bundles are considered too vital to allow the feedback to be turned down manually - unless you go for a hardware hack, and that’s generally a bad idea, because the reason they’re too vital is that if the cables are damaged (say from being stretched, or kinked) the main power supply can’t deliver power to the processor or the limb motivators. This damage also occasionally results in a short-circuit loop that can wipe the solid-state drive containing an omnic’s programming - so the omnic in question had better hope they not only have a recent back-up, but also good enough friends to make sure it gets used.

Max doesn’t use neck or spine locks very much - for one thing, they’re _damn_ hard to set up, and for another it feels kind of like cheating. Using neck and spine locks on human fighters is frowned upon - some leagues even ban them entirely, since while broken bones and concussions are the price of doing business, paralysis and death tend to bring in the cops. So using them on omnics when the omnics aren’t allowed to use them on her feels…weird.

On the other hand, Zeer is big, and fast, and hits (like most omnics, regardless of size) like a Mac truck. She’s damaging their limb relays, but at the rate it’s going Zeer is going to get in a hit solid enough to floor Max before she manages to take the relays out enough to immobilize them.

She lets it go to ground - easy enough, as that’s what Zeer has been angling for all along. They try immediately for a top mount - useful to them, because they can do all sorts of unpleasant things from that position, while most of the things Max can get to are (useless) joint locks and chokes. She eels out of it, grabbing an arm as she spins to try for an elbow - no use going straight to the nuclear option if Zeer is one of the few who don’t turn down their joint feedback.

They aren’t.

She kicks them away before they can turn her joint lock into one of their own, hitting their chest-panel in a way that makes their lights stutter for a moment before they come back online, and dives after them. It takes a few minutes - or a few seconds, this deep in a fight time is relative - of playing slap-hands before Max manages to get the mount she was looking for, wrapping her legs around the omnic’s hips while she snakes her arms up, one under and one over theirs, to lock at the front of their neck. She can tell the instant Zeer recognizes the danger as she begins to crank their hips one way and their neck the other - they redouble their efforts to throw her off, slamming their head back to catch her in the face while they try to use their metal muscles to pull her forward and prevent her from completing the lock.

But they can’t quite manage it. Max, sweating and with blood trailing from what feels like another damn broken nose, inexorably continues to apply torque. As the feedback starts to squeal through the omnic's vocoder, Max grits out “You wanna tell me where your back-up is? Just in case? I’m not much good at code, but-” 

They tap, free hand slapping the mat three times with sharp pops that echo like desperation.

The minute Max gets the nod from the ref she releases the lock, arms and legs opening so she can shove Zeer off and lie there gulping air like a fish. Zeer lies off to the side, trying to cudgel overloaded relays into movement. Everything, even the crowd, is silent for a moment - or that might just be the ringing in her ears.

Eventually a hand appears in her field of view, and she takes it, allowing the ref to pull her to her feet with a wince. Every muscle in her core is on fire - tomorrow is going to _suck_. Zeer’s up too, on the ref’s other side, but it’s _her_ hand that he raises in victory. Max lifts her other hand in the traditional fighter’s salute, grinning through bloody teeth - winning always feels good, and this one feels even better, because she’d had to work for it. That’s not always how it goes, but tonight it’s enough to calm something that had still been raging from her past’s unexpected visit.

Before they leave the ring Zeer shakes her hand and says “Good fight.” with a hint of a warble still in their vocoder. Max, still grinning, nods. “Good fight. Hey - you come by Marco’s garage tomorrow night, I’ll give you a good discount on repairs if you like. It’s only fair.”

The omnic shakes their head, in disbelief if Max is reading it right. “Perhaps I shall see you tomorrow, then. You are a strange human, Eshkibog.”

She shrugs, even though it hurts to move her shoulders. “’s been said before, it’ll be said again.”

* * *

She sleeps through the day, and wakes better rested than she’s been since Commander Judgemental popped out of the ether to taunt her. Ducking out of what could charitably be termed her ‘apartment’ (it’s technically more of a shack, which she is definitely not paying rent or utilities on) into the blue light of dusk, she takes a few slow, deep breaths, wincing as a stretch reminds her that, oh yeah, she’d been in a fight yesterday. A bit of gentle prodding and a check in the jeep’s side mirror confirms last night’s diagnosis - her nose isn’t broken, just tender, but she’s working a beautiful pair of raccoon eyes, along with a split along the line of her jaw that she doesn’t remember getting.

The air smells like hot asphalt and dry grass, with just a bare tang of diesel alighting on the back of her tongue. The nightjars are out, she can hear them out in the fields, but other than that the only things that break the silence are the calls of mating frogs, grasshoppers, and the slightest hint of the whine of trucks on the highway, at the very edge of hearing. When she’d been younger, this kind of quiet had weirded her out - the only time the base had ever been this quiet was when something had gone wrong, someone left in the field, or injured so bad that the rest of them waited on tenterhooks for word from Medical.

The base had been that quiet the day her mom hadn’t come back.

But now, after seven years of living in the back of beyond, carving out a life for herself in not-quite-ghost towns and forgotten byways, she can appreciate the peace. This kind of quiet - active quiet - means nothing is exploding (intentionally or otherwise), no one is trying to kill her or sneaking up behind her with who knows what intent (she still hasn’t figured out where that last guy had come from, or what he’d wanted - but generally when people try to stick her with syringes unannounced, she takes reasonable offence).

It never lasts long - in almost seven years, her record is ten months in one place - but it’s nice. Restful, even.

Max weighs the pros and cons of walking to the garage versus driving while she stands under the showerhead, rinsing cheap, lime-scented shampoo out of her hair. She’s getting to the point where she needs a haircut, mohawk skirting the line between acceptable and too shaggy - but to get a haircut she’s got to be awake while the tiny barbershop across from the garage is open, which necessitates a bit of rearrangement of her schedule. Working the (unofficial, under the table) night shift at Marco’s garage suits her down to the core, but it sure as hell makes some things inconvenient.

She decides, eventually, to drive. That way, she can catch a catnap in the back of the jeep around sunrise and hit the barber’s when he opens, before she comes home to sleep. Plan made, she throws her beat-up duffel bag into the back of the jeep - there’s no lock on the shack, and while she’s pretty sure that no one is dumb enough to steal from her out here, it’s safer to just keep the stuff she can’t replace with her, rather than relying on other people not to be stupid. It lands with a clatter on top of the tool box, and she heads into town.

It feels like it’s going to be a great day. Right up until she saunters through the door of the diner for breakfast, and Rita, as an afterthought after putting down the plate of toast and the syrup carousel, says “Oh - someone was looking for you, earlier.”

“Oh?” Max replies, desperately casual despite the fact that her insides have iced over.

“Yeah - tall, good-lookin’ woman, with kind of a scruffy guy. Looked like they’d been on the road for a while.”

Okay, so that…doesn’t _sound_ like most of the people who’ve tried to kill or otherwise inconvenience her in the last seven years, but… “And what’d you tell them?”

Rita gives her a look. “Please, honey. I wasn’t born yesterday. Told’em I hadn’t seen anyone that looked like that come through in ages.” Max relaxes, slightly, only to tense up again as Rita continues, “Didn’t seem to discourage ‘em none, though. Think they’re stayin’ at the old motel out on the highway. Said they were gonna ‘have a look around’.”

“Great.” says Max, in a tone of voice that indicates this turn of events is definitely not great.

* * *

She tries to put it out of her mind as she heads to the garage, her only concession to the worry twisting her intestines the way she carefully backs into her normal parking spot, positioning herself for a speedy getaway. And, okay, so maybe she keeps a little closer of an eye on the garage door, rolled up to let the night air in, and _maybe_ her crowbar is a little more glued to her side than usual but. She’s not dumb - people looking for her has never turned out to be a good thing in the past, and with Jack’s appearance even the faint hope that she’s always carried, that it might be Overwatch coming back for her, has died.

Max manages to get some work in on her current project car - an old Charger that she’s refurbishing for one of the local smugglers. It’s not one of the true classics - 1960s and 1970s Chargers are a century old now, and rarer than platinum - but one of the rehashes from around the turn of the millennium, which is still older than Max, or about 95% of all the people she’s ever talked to. Thankfully, it’s not a real refurb he’s after - he wants it to _look_ like a Charger, but perform like a cop car built in 2076. She’s already replaced most of the body panelling with a nanotube-polymer shell, reinforced the chassis with some judicious additions and replacements - the engine is next, since she needs it in place before she can tinker with the suspension and wheel assemblages.

Zeer walks - well, limps - in around hour four, their staticky imitation of throat-clearing pulling her out of an engine-induced trance. “You offered me a discount, last night,” they start, and Max is pretty sure she can read reluctance in every line of their body. “How much would you charge to pound out some dents, and realign a couple of nerve bundles?”

Max drags the back of her wrist across her forehead, leaving, she’s sure, a trail of engine grease all the way across. “Seventy-five bucks,” she says, definitively, “a hundred, if you want to pay in anything other than cash or barter.” Using Marco’s POS means paying sales tax - it also means giving Marco a 20% cut of the profit.

She’s startled them, she’s pretty sure - whether they just didn’t expect her to _really_ give them a discount, or if it’s the magnitude. But Max made money off the fight last night, it’s not like she can’t afford to knock 25% off what she’d usually charge for what should be about an hour and a half’s work.

“That is…” lights on their face plate flash in confusion, “eminently reasonable.”

Max grins. “Well, I try. Here, sit down on the bench over there, I’ll go wash my hands. There should be an Allen set right there if you want to start taking off your dented panels.”

By the time she gets back, they’ve got their faceplate and a couple of body panels off, laid gently on the bench beside them. It’s always a little disconcerting, looking at an omnic's face without the covering - it’s a little too ingrained in the human psyche that the faceplate _is_ the face, making what’s underneath more analogous to bare muscle or skull.

It takes about 30 minutes’ careful work and a selection of ball-peen hammers to reshape the faceplate, and even then the job isn’t perfect, dimples still visible from the right angle. But it’s as good as it will get without machining an entirely new plate, and at least Zeer’s vision will be unobstructed. The body panels are much faster - the material is thicker, true, but there are fewer cosmetic details to account for, and the shapes are simpler.

Realigning the nerve bundles takes more time than she’d expected, the central axial bundle in their left leg nearly entirely unseated (explaining the limp), and accessory bundles in both arms and down one side of their torso in need of attention. She checks the spinal column without being asked, and is pleased to note no permanent damage - it’s glowing a little brighter in some places, where her spinal lock had stretched the sheath, but that will even out with time, although she suggests, gently, that Zeer should probably stay out of the fights for at least the rest of the week to give it time to heal. By the time she finishes, dawn is starting to brighten the horizon as seen through the roll-up doors, just a thin sliver of pink visible under a dark blue sky.

* * *

It takes them two days to get to the shitty little border town that Jesse assures her contains one Maxine Eshkibog, former ward of Overwatch, and now dubiously legal mechanic extraordinaire. Two days of diner food, refusing to let Jesse drive, and hustling for money in a way that would almost feel nostalgic, if it weren’t for the fact that the cowboy at her elbow is definitely not a Saint (shockingly, the new Overwatch doesn’t pay particularly well - or at all). 

McCree has something stuck between his teeth, something he’s pointedly Not Talking About - and there are questions she needs to ask him, chief among them how the fuck he knows where Max is when Lena’s spent a decent portion of the last five years and a non-zero amount of resources trying to find out precisely that, but all of that is overridden by mission focus - find Max. Bring her home. Worry about questions, and what the fuck McCree is up to, later.

The woman in the diner says she’s never heard of Max, doesn’t recognize the description McCree gives (and _how the_ fuck _does McCree have a current description_ ) - but Lena is sure she’s lying. It’s something in her eyes, in the little jerk at the description, quickly covered up with the sweet politeness of a veteran waitress. Lena’s set to press, but a pointy-toed boot hits her in the shin before she can even open her mouth and McCree sends the waitress off with his own brand of cowboy charm.

Lena points at the man across the table. “You do that again, we’re going to have words. What was that for?”

“No sense in riling her up none,” McCree drawls, smothering a stack of pancakes in more syrup than is strictly necessary. “We know where Max’ll be - an’ it’s nice to see she’s got folks who’ll cover for her like that.”

“And why, exactly, does Max need people to cover for her?”

He holds up a hand as he finishes his mouthful. “Max ain’t exactly been on the right side of the law - she’s got plenty a good reasons t’be hard to find.”

Again, there’s something he isn’t saying, she can see it in his eyes.

She decides to let it go. With any luck, Max’ll be able to answer this particular question herself in about seven hours’ time. 

* * *

Maybe an hour after Zeer leaves, pressing a stack of bills into her hands with their earnest thanks, she’s pulled out of the engine block yet again, this time by someone clearing their throat from the front of the garage.

Dawn is well underway, and whoever it is can be seen only in silhouette, a black blob (wearing a hat?) against a too-bright canvas of reddish light. A second silhouette walks, with the smooth, dangerous gait of a well-fed predator, to join the first, and Max’s brain goes into overdrive, groping for the crowbar she’s sure is within arm’s reach, somewhere. If she can take out one, the surprise will give her enough time to make the back door and the jeep - once she’s in the car, they’ll never catch her. Drive overnight, hop a few borders - there’s nothing she needs to go back for at the shack, and enough distance will give her at least another couple months of grace before any of the numerous things that might be looking catch her up again. 

She can’t find the crowbar, but there’s a crescent wrench by her knee - she can put it centre mass, she knows, there’d been an axe-throwing league in the last town, and it won’t be enough to kill but it’ll damn well slow at least one of them down - and she’s about halfway through the motion of standing and throwing when the bigger silhouette says, in a characteristic drawl, “Here now, that ain’t no way to greet old friends.”

The wrench falls from nerveless fingers as the two silhouettes step further into the garage, resolving themselves into a scruffily-bearded man in a serape and a hat….and a tall, bald, _holy fuck_ incredibly _striking_ woman. Jesus christ, she’s not the only one who grew up to look like mom 2.0. 

“Jesse?” she asks, and later she’ll kick herself over how much she’d sounded like a little kid in that moment, yearning but sure this can’t be happening. “Lena?”

* * *

When the woman stands warily up from behind the car, Lena is initially sure that they’ve got the wrong person, the wrong place. Max had been two inches shorter than Lena when they’d parted ways - this woman has to be at least a head taller than Lena, 6’8” if she’s an inch. The nose is wrong - then again, _that_ nose has been broken multiple times, it looks like. The hair - well, the last time Lena’d seen Max she’d still had a thick dark faux-hawk, but this purple and teal mohawk isn’t necessarily out of character for her, and neither are the tattoos.

It’s just. All of it together is. Startling.

“Here now, that ain’t no way to greet old friends,” Jesse says, an edge to his habitual drawl, and Lena belatedly realizes that a) with the rising sun behind them, Max probably can’t see them clearly, and b) Max had been a split second from throwing - something, a silver glint in her right hand, and given the muscle Lena sees in her arms and chest that probably would have been incapacitating if aimed right.

Whatever it was, it drops to the floor with a metallic clatter, and Max says (and that, Lena recognizes, Max’s voice is still _Max_ , just a little deeper than it used to be), “Jesse? Lena?”, voice full of shock and confusion, and no little amount of longing.

“Hey Max,” Lena says, stepping further into the garage, careful to keep her hands out to the side where she can see them, Jesse’s words ( _she’s got plenty a good reasons t’be hard to find_ ) running through her mind. “Long time no see.”

“Holy fuck _Lena_ ,” Max is around the car in a rush, just short of throwing herself at the smaller woman. She still hugs like Max, even if the proportions are new, and Lena returns the hug with interest. “How are you, are you okay, I looked but-“

Lena’s talking over her, she can’t help it, “Are you okay, I couldn’t find you, I tried-“

The hug lasts for a while after they both trail off, before Jesse clears his throat. “What, no hug for me?” he asks, mock hurt.

Max grins despite suspiciously watery eyes. “Hey Jess,” she says, and wraps her arms around the cowboy and _lifts_ , the bear hug leaving Jesse’s feet four inches off the ground. 

Jesse laughs, patting her on the back. “Put me down, ya show-off. Always knew you were gonna be a giant.”

Gently, she lowers him to the ground and pushes him away, surreptitiously swiping at her eyes. “What are you guys doing here? Not that I’m not happy to see you, but.”

Lena exchanges a glance with Jesse. “Winston initiated a recall - we came to get you.”

It takes her a beat, and then Max snorts, the noise laden with bitterness. “That’s nice ’n all, but Morrison already made it pretty fuckin’ clear that I wasn’t on his list, thanks.”

“He what.” The flatness in Lena’s voice is dangerous, and she turns to Jesse, eyes snapping. “He _what_.”

“Yeahhhh,” Jesse prevaricates, “About that, uh…”

Max crosses her arms. The look on Lena’s face makes it clear that this had better be a good explanation, and after a moment Jesse caves.

“Listen, I did point him your way, Maxi, I just- I thought he’d at least _try_. I mean, he brought Lena in, and he pulled _her_ outta an honest to god police transport.”

Max rolled her eyes. “Who fuckin’ knows. He told me I was a disgrace t’my mom’s memory, I told him to take a long walk off a short pier, and that’s about where it ended. I left him five clicks from where he’d left his bike and went home to put in some quality time with a punching bag.”

“Well, now _I’m_ askin’ you - come back with us, answer the recall. Jack might not like it but Jack can go fuck himself, I _know_ the rest of the crew’d be happy to have you - both of you - back. You’re family.”

It takes Max a couple long seconds of searching McCree’s face before she finally nods, letting her arms fall to her sides. “Okay.”


End file.
